_Vorwaerts_! The months of their comradeship seemed to him epitomized in the word.

The joy and inspiration of many a hard climb came back, made bitter with regret for things very pleasant and now done with forever.

Nights on some high ledge, sheltered with rocks and set in the pale glimmer of snow-fields, with a fire of brushwood lighting up the faces of well-loved comrades; half hours passed in rock chimneys wedged overhead by a boulder, or in snow-gullies beneath a bulge of ice, when one man struggled above, out of sight, and the rest of the party crouched below with what security it might waiting for the cheery cry, "_Es geht.

Vorwaerts_!"; the last scramble to the summit of a virgin peak; the swift glissade down the final snow-slopes in the dusk of the evening with the lights of the village twinkling below; his memories tramped by him fast and always in the heart of them his friend's face shone before his eyes.

Chayne stood for a moment dazed and bewildered.
There rose up in his mind that first helpless question of distress, "Why ?" and while he stood, his face puzzled and greatly troubled, there fell upon his ears from close at hand a simple message of sympathy uttered in a whisper gentle but distinct: "I am very sorry." Chayne looked up.